


Tethers

by rainer76



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Arguments, BDSM, Brothers, Cock & Ball Torture, Connections, Fighting, Fisticuffs, Gags, M/M, Magic, Predicament Bondage, Thor: Ragnarok (2017) Spoilers, magical healing, non-con elements, pay heed to the tags, sex - a lot of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-08 04:45:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12857022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainer76/pseuds/rainer76
Summary: Thor cupped his brother’s nape a mere month ago, drew Loki toward his own body in a punishing hug. Felt the warmth of him, the slim line of his thighs, hip, and torso. The space between them pressed to nothingness. He stares at the flawless vision now, and doesn’t hurl his mother’s hairbrush at the image in a rage. He doesn’t need proof of things he already knows. His brother is preparing to withdraw.“Would you bend the knee?”“Would you lose your other eye?” Loki casts back, instantly. “Oaf. Now let me get back to work.”





	Tethers

**Author's Note:**

> This is just an excuse to write highly unrealistic sex. Heed the tags

“I’m sorry, my liege. It’s all I had time to salvage. Hela’s attack on Asgard, her descent on the palace grounds left us so little time to react.” Hilde’s face is a death shroud, sallow skin, rheumy eyes. Her hands tremble as she hands over the burlap sack. “Your parent’s belongings, sire, what little of them I could gather.” She presses the collection close.

Thor’s flinches.

He can recall afternoons of dry tutelage spent under Hilde’s strict care. Learning the false history of Asgard by rote, the peace accords and signed treaties, the lesser intelligence of those cultures deemed ‘conquered.’ The monsters Odin defeated, both far and wide. In her class-room with the sun slanted through the western windows, history was filled with the clash of warfare, underlying wisdom. Her lessons were a tapestry, woven through the golden age of Odin’s war.

Rapt, he had listened to her stories. He had sworn aloud he, too, would slay the monsters.

The sack clinks softly in the exchange and Thor looks down at a loss. His parent’s lives cannot be summed up by anything in this meagre collection. He doesn’t know what to say - that Hilde should have let Asgard be the funeral pyre of his parent’s possessions, maybe – or that he’s absurdly grateful for any reminder of them still. “Thank you. But you shouldn’t have dallied at the time, Hilde. Rather, thought for your own safety first.”

Hilde pats his hand, as if he’s a child still in her school-room, her smile tremulous. “I have served your parents faithfully since you were in swaddling clothes, my lord. Take what comfort you may.” She curtsies and takes her leave. A small woman, with a bent over frame.

Thor doesn’t investigate until he’s in private, up-ending the sack-cloth over the single cot in his room. Anything of power in Asgard was kept in the vaults, the trinkets that tumble onto the mattress are a whimsical collection. Most of them belonged to Frigga – in the end, the things Odin prized the most were of his wife, and he kept those items close - a hairbrush, the ivory bone smooth with age. A pressed flower in a sorcerer’s tome, the papyrus spiderweb thin. Thor smiles briefly when he sees a child’s gauntlet. He had worn the silver bracelet around his wrist religiously - until his forearm outgrew its width - and cried when Odin put it away. He remembers the various links were removed year by year, creating a gap so he could push his hand through. Odin replaced it with a new one, saying armour was useless if it didn’t shield the skin. He had been inconsolable.

It was his first true piece of field armour. As a boy, and with wrongful pride, he thought it made him a warrior. Thor touches it now with a forefinger, tracing the childish runes engraved on its surface. It’s barely two inches wide. The circumference – to his eye – appears tiny. He puts it aside reluctantly, the metal warmed from his touch. Four possessions, a burlap sack and the grief, the enormity of it, strikes him anew. He has lost his home.

“I can’t believe your wrists were ever that thin,” Loki comments, from behind.

“Hilde collected them before the palace was over-run.” Thor looks over his shoulder once, sceptical. He has to fight the instinct to cover the tome from sight. “The pretend king never slept in mother and father’s chambers?”

“No, and thank you for that association. I preferred living in the south wing.” Loki pauses, then adds delicately. “Their room was kept sealed.”

For what, Thor thinks bitterly, Odin’s imminent return from exile? He folds the sack neatly and turns to face his brother, taking a seat on the cot. Thor’s legs jitter. He can’t rest easily in his private room. He can’t rest at all. That he has a private chamber to begin with, when space is at a premium aboard this over-crowded ship, grates of over-privilege. When they – his people - are equal in their suffering. He has seen small families huddle on the floor, sharing a quiet meal. Their expressions lost, afraid, as their new reality settles. Tiredly, Thor knuckles his remaining eye and squints at his brother.

He seems smeared at the edges. Thor tends to wander - from one end of the ship to the other, up and down the levels at night – until his mind is blank and the exhaustion in his limbs becomes a quake. He can’t stop being in motion. He can’t stop period. “Was your betrayal on Sakaar true?”

“You want to revisit the only occasion your wits outshone mine? Wait. Of course you do.”

Loki is blue from the dim lighting; from the star-streaked sky of outer space. Amused, Thor notes his own palm is reflected with the same Jotun hue. The illusion of Loki’s native skin fades as Thor motions the lights to full brightness until Loki is just Loki, black hair and pale skin, sharp with feral magic. Ship’s business is clutched in one hand: rations and power outage, figures on the remaining distance to Midguard, their dwindling fuel supplies. All things Thor ought to pay attention to. Instead he walks among the people when he can; a touch here, a fleeting word there, trying to ease their uncertainty. Trying to bury his own. He leaves the daily minutia to his brother.

Loki shrugs when Thor makes no answer. “Yes it was true. But you knew that already.”

Thor braces his elbows on his knees and scowls. “You would have sold me back into slavery so easily?”

“You would have survived. I would have been richer for it. Your accommodations certainly would have been sweeter.”

Loki would have kept him on the Grandmaster’s planet, chained and bound in servitude if it kept Thor out of Hela’s grasp, if it kept him alive that much longer. The knowledge has sat for some time. Loki only came to Asgard when Thor was already committed to the fight, and he hadn’t come for the people.

There are already whispers the destruction came too easily to him. That Loki is unaffected by their uprooted lifestyle. His lack of affected grief offends. There are corners of the ship where the story is retold: it was Loki who released Surtur, Loki’s intonation that wrought destruction upon their home planet. Even if the order came from Thor history has a habit of reorganising itself.

His brother has grown tense as the days passed, the closer they draw to earth the more manic his smile becomes. Thor feels his anxiety spike. The urge to touch, to check and recheck, like the strike of a lash. He shifts on the bed, the thick muscles in his shoulders bunching.

When Thor was young he was arrogant, unknowingly cruel. When he was an adolescent he was a feckless youth, a wildfire and foolishly brave. He has learnt caution at his father’s behest. He had patience hammered into his psyche like a hot spike, through adversary and unexpected kindnesses. His bravery was founded on the things he feared to lose and now he has lost all of them, one by one, a succession like falling dominoes. His mother. Jane. The surety of his first-born position, Odin: and a weapon forged out of legend itself, shattered like so much star-dust. He has lost his planet; his friends. Fandor, Hogan, the Warriors Three. His people look to him for leadership in blind trust and the fear inside him gnaws, savage as Fenrir’s teeth. His fear grows more potent in adulthood, more consuming than it ever was as a child. “We have enough supplies?” He asks, to break the silence.

“Well, out of the two vessels we stole – a pleasure skip with a bar of truly astonishing proportions – and a slave transport with copious amounts of gruel, I know which ship I preferred had survived. We may go mad with boredom, brother, but we won’t starve.”

“And the integration?”

“They cleave to their own. Asgardians on the upper decks; they bunk down in the cargo bay like the saddest puppy pile in history. Korg and his motley crew have taken the cells in the lower tiers, torn the doors off their hinges, thrown up sheets for privacy. Unlike you and the Asgardians they won’t ‘pass’ on Midguard. No mistaking them for anything other than alien. Some have requested to continue onward when you disembark.”

The survivors mean to separate then.

Thor’s fists clench. “And you brother? Will you ‘pass’ on earth? What shape will you assume when we reach planet-side?”

“You think I’ll run?” I know you of old, Thor doesn’t say. His brother is familiar. Despairingly, he looks at the trinkets spread out on his bunk, these things his parents collected over the years. Loki is the only family possession worth keeping. The smile is back in his brother’s voice, the goad familiar. “A hundred and ninety-nine deaths, twelve buildings demolished and a score of others rebuilt…do you think the period spent in Odin’s dungeon will count as time served for the humans? Do you think it will satisfy them as a just and worthy punishment?”

A hundred and ninety-nine deaths. Less than a year before Loki’s escape from the dungeon; and then years eating grapes at leisure.

“No,” Thor says, honestly. “They would deem the punishment too light.”

“In that case, some appearance quite different to this one.”

“Steven Strange knew of our arrival the moment we revisited Earth,” Thor muses. “He would peel your false visage away, if you were to hide.”

“This is my false visage,” Loki retorts.

His father said Loki changed form the instant he saw a blood-splattered Asgardian looming over his altar, battle-axe in hand. Even as an infant Loki’s survival instincts were sound.

Thor’s oft wondered if the change softened Odin any, stayed his hand, Jotun blood hidden by aesir gold. More frequently, Thor has wondered if Loki’s inherent magic plucked Hela’s memory right out of his father’s mind, and based his image upon hers. Black and green, horned crowns, knives and witching magic at their fingertips. He wondered if Odin blanched as his adopted son grew older; or if the similarity between his first child and his last had helped in some way, spelled the hidden story of a second chance to come.

“Don’t worry, brother,” Loki sneers. “ I have no intention of ‘passing’ on Midguard. I’m content to remain onboard the ship when we first reach orbit.”

“And steal it back into space at the earliest opportunity?”

“Perhaps,” Loki looks amused. “Is this paranoia or a fear?”

“More like the tingling sense of experience.”

His brother frowns, cataloguing Thor’s expression, the unhappy line of his shoulders. “Brother,” he says, gently. “What is this?”

Thor’s throat tightens. Openness has never bothered him before, it’s a trait true of a born warrior, but he can feel the fear inside of him like a lodestone. “I would have you stay.” Too many losses in a row and it’s taken seed; this newfound terror; it won’t release its bite. You’re all that’s left, Thor wants to howl, don’t you understand that? He wants to carve his name on Loki’s flesh, until the words are no longer an implore but a written decree, stay, stay, for you are mine. Thor shivers lightly. The air is too thin, the gravity too light. He’s too young to be king, the grace he found on Sakaar – you and I should go our separate ways – destroyed alongside his planet. He wants to take the words back. He thinks those words were necessary.

Loki slouches, mouth curved into a faux smile. The relaxation is forced. “You have my word, then. Don’t worry, brother, you’ll be among your many, many, friends soon. Banner will be surely pleased to return to earth. And any…fears…you may experience are but the hiccups of a new reign. It will settle.”

Thor cupped his brother’s nape a mere month ago, drew Loki toward his own body in a punishing hug. Felt the warmth of him, the slim line of his thighs, hip, and torso. The space between them pressed to nothingness. He stares at the flawless vision now, and doesn’t hurl his mother’s hairbrush at the image in a rage. He doesn’t need proof of things he already knows. His brother is preparing to withdraw.

“Would you bend the knee?”

“Would you lose your other eye?” Loki casts back, instantly. “Oaf. Now let me get back to work.”

He breathes out slowly, a space of one, two, three seconds before he inhales again. His shoulders loosen. A child’s bracelet, a book of magic, a flower pressed between spider-web pages, the worn handle of a hair brush. The Grandmaster hadn’t known the insult he’d inflicted when he’d shorn Thor’s locks. It was a cultural difference, but by the great halls of Valhalla, only a warrior shamed in battle had his hair cut so brutally short.

They are a long-lived race. It will take time to regrow.

Loki’s first plan was to sell him back into slavery, Thor reminds himself. By Loki’s twisted sense of reasoning he would have done it for Thor’s own good. To keep him alive. To keep him safe from Hela. His second plan, the one that was actionable, was to fight at Thor’s side.

“Are you here? Really here for what comes next?”

“What do you think?” Loki says, scathingly.

 

 

&&&

 

 

He has no intention of being there.

He’s going to run. His feet will take flight, like Pegasus to the sky, the instant they’re in Midguards orbit. Thor might believe in rainbows and butterflies but they are refugees first, and humans barely have compassion for their own migrations across borders, let alone interstellar ones. Let alone a war criminal. In this tin can of a spaceship Loki can’t breathe.

The first state of shock will wear off soon, he knows, and then the people’s ire will rise. In the bowels of the ship, many floors below, Loki opens his eyes as he draws his consciousness back. Thor’s hunched body, his pitiful possessions, fade away to the grotesque visage of…something other. “Your name is Xanor?” Loki hazards. He’s courteous at least, Xanor did have the patience to wait. “I understand you made use of the ship’s communication. To contact your wife? Family - ?”

“Pod-mate.”

“ - Pod-mate the other day.”

The creature is reptilian in appearance, powerful claws, stubby arms, the midsection scaled and thick with muscle. The tongue is bisected when it flicks it out to taste the air. “Yes,” it agrees.

“I would buy passage when your ship arrives.”

“You were the Grandmaster’s plaything. Do you barter with your body?”

“The dice have favoured me.” Loki corrects.

People still gamble; they gamble even with the last of their possessions. Loki won (not quite far and square) but he has no intentions of returning the winnings. He flits between forms on this ship, a twelve year old boy with dark eyes in the kitchens, a buxom blonde with a way with the dice on the upper decks. The men are keen to play; not so keen to lose. Loki opens his palm. “I trust it’s enough.”

Xanor examines the offerings. It reaches out a claw to stir through the gold. Loki snaps his hand shut. Grudgingly it nods.

“And your pod-mates arrival?”

The eyes blink languorously. “Before Midguard, not twelve hours away.”

It’s plenty of time. Loki only has one item of worth. “I’ll be waiting.”

He steps out of the cell. Distantly, Korg’s voice can be heard from the opposite corridor and Loki takes the alternate route.

The ship has a pent in smell on the lower tiers, wholly unpleasant. It’s as if the gladiators purchased off Sakaar and transported to the Grandmaster’s arena let their fear bleed into the walls. Rubbish dump it might have been, but lifeforms picked up and dropped on the planet weren’t as common as Thor, the Hulk, or Loki had made it seem. Most contestants were purchased elsewhere. Lightly, Loki trips down the stair-case, veers left, and walks straight into a muscled wall. His brother’s palm hits the centre of his chest, thumb and forefinger splayed into a V, resting a hairbreadth from his throat. Surprised, Loki stutters backwards. “Brother, on your nightly wanderings I see.”

And how in Hades did he get down here so fast?

“Keeping an ear to the ground,” Thor allows. There’s a rumble like the first warning of thunder in his voice. The oaf, impossibly, has grown larger. They were both still on the edge of adolescence when Jotunheim, Thor’s exile to Midguard, first occurred. Whatever puppy fat his brother once possessed is now a distant memory. Thor’s a man, a King in his prime, and Loki…has noticed. In truth, he’s noticed for years.

Thor doesn’t let his hand drop. He takes a step forward to compensate for the one Loki took away. His fingers curl around Loki’s nape, catching at the fine strands of hair. “Come walk with me.”

“Delighted as always, but I have other matters – “

“Now, I think. There is something I wish to show you.”

“The metal bracelet in your left hand? It’s a comely trinket but one I have seen. Mother’s tome however -”

“Concerning the ship, Loki. I’ve explored every inch of it but you need to see this.”

Loki hesitates. His damnable curiosity stirs. Also a fissure of unease, because what if he knows? What if? Loki only took one item from the planet and he has hidden it well. He will need it for what’s coming.

Thor’s temperament oscillates wildly. He shows a sunny disposition among the dull survivors. Other days, there’s a melancholy about him soft as rain. With Banner and the Valkyrie he is jovial and bright, deep in his cups. At night there are sharp spikes of disquiet as he paces the ship. His footsteps have sounded loudly outside of Loki’s quarters before moving on. Thor’s seen more of the vessel than any other person on it. Loki can’t read his current mood, other to say it’s grave. Thor’s face is lined with a deep and abiding exhaustion. “You will rest, afterward?” Loki says cautiously. “You need sleep, brother.”

And it’s much easier to depart these people – this ship - if Thor falls into a mindless slumber.

Not for the first time Loki curses the destruction of the pleasure skip. He could have mixed the alcohols to create an elixir – provided he got there before Brunhilde found and drank the entire stock.

“I’ll find my way to peace,” Thor rumbles, voice gentling. “But come.”

In silence Thor leads him to the rear of the ship, and then down into its belly, below the cells, the armoury, beneath the engine room until there are no other sounds but the loud pulse of the ships heart-beat. “In here,” Thor says at last, and motions toward a room no larger than a storage unit.

Warily, Loki enters.

The shelving is lined with shackles, the same ones used against Thor on Sakaar, strong enough to hold a god. Powerful enough to contain the Hulk. There are slaver control disks displayed in neat rows, straight bars of irundion iron to keep a prisoner spreadeagled. There are gags to take away a person’s voice. Hoods to take away their sight. Loki feels his magic flare, seidr green, as he grinds to an abrupt halt. Prison transport vessel, he reminds himself, and a very well stocked one at that.

Thor watches. Conspicuously, he has placed himself between Loki and the door.

“My, it is a pretty collection, Thor.”

“No sibling endearment?”

“I don’t take well to threats,” Loki retorts, sharply.

Thor’s shoulders take up the entire exit, hip canted against the door jamb, remaining eye fixed on Loki’s reaction. He rubs his own thumb across his bottom lip, smearing wetness, and lets his question echo from earlier. “Would you bend the knee?”

“I wouldn’t bow to Hela, and she was the first born, what makes you think I’ll act otherwise for you?” Glibly he stretches his arms out, because there are threats greater than Thor’s posturing and they are coming. “Fealty under duress means nothing, brother: your new haircut doesn’t give you licence to act the part.”

“I’m not ashamed. Not of my myself or you.”

Disbelief flares in Loki’s eyes, his voice becomes smooth, black as oil. They are not talking about the same thing, he realises with relief. Thor is occupied with thoughts of earth, not realising Loki won’t be there, will in fact be long gone. He has the tesserect and a quarrel to settle. If Thor honestly believes he is anxious about his reception on that backwater, primordial soup of a planet, then Loki can play the part. “Not ashamed of me, brother? Careful, Midguard fast approaches.”

Thor steps into the room proper. The space between them becomes claustrophobic, the dimensions shrunken like one of Dr. Strange’s tricks. “And I’m not threatening you.”

Pointedly, Loki glances at the paraphernalia. “Diplomacy wasn’t exactly your strongest suit but I think even you might see the discordance of bringing me here.”

“You told me once your greatest wish was to be treated as equals. I thought it was laughable. You are you, Loki - and I am I. I thought the differences between us were complimentary. Equality is an oft-desired myth, brother.”

“That sounds like something I would say,” Loki returns. He can feel his magic coil in anxious flutters. The accord between them is too new and there’s some secret part of Loki (buried) that’s hesitant to imperil it. Still, he keeps one eye on Thor, the other on the corridor behind him, the promise of a quick escape. Thor’s mood has become stranger, more complex, since the destruction of Asgard. “Should I steal the words from your part, then, brother? Is equality not something we should strive for?”

“Yes,” Thor says, simply.

The smile is a mockery. “Right then, as enlightening as this discussion has been, I think it’s time for it to end. Let me through.”

Thor stares down at the child’s bracelet in his hand. He turns it end over end, like a gambler summoning luck before he pitches the dice. It’s no one particular expression. It’s no particular word. Maybe the first clue is the adjustment Thor makes, as he resettles his stance until he’s balanced on the balls of his feet. Some tingle of alarm pokes at Loki’s consciousness, some portent of warning. When Thor looks up there’s an ungodly fire in his remaining eye, burning white-hot. Loki back-pedals three steps. Belated, he shouts for his magic.

Simultaneously, Thor leaps the small distance between them.

The flat of Thor’s palm slaps across his face, smothering Loki’s cry mid-word. The impact is hard enough to rattle his teeth, to strain the muscles in his neck. Thor’s other hand catches Loki behind the thigh, and he lifts and body slams them both to the filthy ground.

Whatever air was in Loki’s lungs is pummelled out. Loki twists his head aside, but Thor wedges the blade of his hand deeper between his lips. Snarling, Loki bites down, ready to tear the flesh right off the phalanges unless Thor releases his hold. If he can get air, he can breath. Loki can conjure, transmute, ensorcel himself away. Thor, in direct opposition, pays no heed, but rams his hand further down Loki’s mouth, keeping his jaws pried apart.

Bewildered at the violent change, Loki thrashes to get an arm up between them. He gets a hand on his knife, flips it, and stabs the blade deep into Thor’s thigh, burying it to the hilt. His brother grunts loudly. Loki hip checks, snapping his head in the opposite direction to get his mouth free, and reaches for another knife.

Thor presses backward, creating space between their chests. One meaty fist clenches. His arm falls like Mjölnir, coming from a thousand leagues away. He punches Loki hard in the guts. Their legs tangle, their hips shunt together. For an agonising instant, there’s not a thought in Loki’s head. Nothing but his brother’s blood, running hot between his teeth. His vision dims, then Loki’s stomach heaves, retching. He tries to rend the blade upward, to tear Thor open from knee to groin, but he lost his grip on the handle.

Thor crushes his wrist with the point of one knee, grinding his weight down until the bone protests. Absurdly, he says: “Ssh. Ssh now. Please. It’s not a fight.”

Of all the stupidly inaccurate, lying -

Thor reaches over both their heads, groping blind among the stacked shelving with his free hand, until he pulls a gag free. Furious, Loki goes utterly feral. Beneath Thor’s body, his entire frame bucks in rebellion. He succeeds in lifting both their weight and tilts, trying to throw the other man off. Thor goes limp, a draped and unmoving anchor, and bears them both back down to the ground. Loki howls, he grinds the meat in his mouth. His body contorts, thrashing like a hooked fish to get free.

The pressure in the room becomes a barometer drop. Ice creeps along the walls, both their breath - rapid and fast - turns to frost in an instant. Loki’s skin flashes blue, for a bare second, his eyes (monster, Thor’s childish self would have crowed) glow a Jotun red.

Cursing, Thor drops the gag on Loki’s chest, punches him twice in the same spot as before and tears his hand out from between Loki’s pointed teeth. He rams the gag in while his brother is still seizing, and uses the thumb indent behind Loki’s skull to lock the device in place.

In design, the gag could be a twin to the one Loki first wore on Midguard.

Shaking his mauled hand to disperse the pain, Thor sits back on his heels with a grimace. Blood splatters both their clothing. His thigh throbs dully, the knife embedded deep.

It’s only one of a thousand stab wounds inflicted over the years, since Loki first turned eight, and used him as a pin-cushion. Thor would keep the scars if he could. He would wear Loki’s mark forever if it soothed the uncertain wildness in his brother. Beneath him, Loki’s thin chest rises and falls like a bellows. His face is aesir pale. “Easy,” Thor murmurs, softly. “Easy now.” Loki’s eyes slit open, a livid green, before both hands fly for Thor’s neck.

It’s an easier struggle - muzzled, oxygen deprived - Thor simply catches his brother’s wrists. Thor lifts his own weight - enough to flip Loki onto his belly - and then sits on his rump to keep him pinned. The prison cuffs are swiped from the second shelf, made with a hasty grab when Loki twists like an eel.

They’re magnetised, the size adjustable for different species. Thor deliberates then takes a pair. He forces Loki’s wrists upward until they’re high on his brother’s back, dislocation imminent unless he subsides. With a huff Loki goes still. Thor doesn’t dally. He bends both arms at the elbow, forearms stacked one on top of the other, and cuffs opposite wrist to opposite elbow, and then does the same again to the other side.

The cloaks the princes wear act as a fluid armour in battle, protecting their spines from a cowardly rear assault. Loki’s green cloak can’t be torn in half any more than Thor’s could, but it can be wrenched clean off its clasp. Thor does so. He tucks the material under the cuffs to protect his brothers skin from chaffing. He winds the remainder of the cloak over and under both forearms, swaddling the limbs together into an unforgiving line, then ties if off at tricep level. It’s tight. There’s a clear channel running down Loki’s spine as his shoulders are wrenched back.

Panting, dizzy with lack of sleep, it’s only then Thor pulls the knife free from his own thigh.

It comes loose with a squelching sound. The blood runs slick and hot down his leg. The fight barely registers as a blip in their interactions, they’ve fought, argued, and wrestled every day of their lives - but the gag Thor knows – is something Loki won’t easily forgive.

His eyes close. Regret and exhilaration co-mingle; fear and triumph become the branches of a gnarled tree. The first kiss of healing is a blessed relief. He sighs deep as the lightning arcs over his thigh. His flesh knits itself together in fits and starts, from the femur bone up. Beneath him Loki cries out, guttural, as he spasms in a random strike.

Thor traces the contractions, watching his brother’s flinch under the lightning-bolts. Caught between Thor’s thighs, face pressed to the metal grating of the ships floor, Loki shies away like a winded horse.

Thor could sink into a slumber deep as Odin, except every twist of Loki’s buttocks catches at his groin, sends a different type of lightning through his body. Carefully, Thor slouches, resting his upper body on Loki’s bound arms, rubbing his face between the tightly squeezed shoulder blades. He exhales gustily, content to stay while he waits for the healing to complete. He can smell ozone, the known scent of his brother, beneath that a miasma of banked violence. He should speak, Thor realises, but he hasn’t finished yet and the night is going to be long.

When the blood no longer flows down his leg, Thor stands gingerly and hobbles to the doorway.

The corridor is clear, devoid of sound. The walls are utilitarian grey, metal grating riveted across the spaces, the type of catwalk that carries any sound of footfall. The lighting is set at a minimum; the shadows stretch spindly arms outward. Thor works the tension from his shoulders, head down, and catches a flash of silver. He stoops to reclaim it, turning the bracelet over, rubbing a distracted thumb over the engraved runes. He dropped his mother’s keepsakes in the skirmish and Thor brings both book and gauntlet into the room.

Loki, in his absence, has gathered his feet under him and is crouched. He’s disheveled - ruffled like an angry crow - he looks fit to murder.

Sighing, Thor hefts the knife. He wipes the blood off on his own clothing and nudges Loki with a knee to the chest, to over-tip his balance. Loki grunts as he lands on his back. With his arms trapped, his brother’s torso is arched, presented like an offering. Thor feels his mouth go dry, his resolve falter. For a minute he can’t remember what he’s doing or why. He can’t recall the thought processes that led him to believe this was a good idea. A necessary step. His voice sounds hoarse when he speaks. “We make planet-fall in twenty four hours. The humans have no dominion over you - _you’re not theirs to punish_ – but some cultural sensitivity should be observed. This won’t be necessary soon. Not after I explain what’s happened.” Thor crouches, he touches the gag in demonstration. Loki’s eyes turn incredulous; the noise he makes becomes urgent. “I need you not to run until I settle things with their figureheads. No one comes to this part of the ship. No one will remove the gag, or aid you in an escape. Just stay, brother, keep your word to me. Trust I’ll plea your case to the humans.”

Loki jerks his head, frustration etched on his features. Thor can feel the seidr magic, a blanket of malevolence, gather about his brother. His skin pebbles in reaction but it has no voice to direct it. In Jotunheim, Loki would have stood at the fore-ranks of their army, his magic used against enemies to further King Laufey’s campaign. On Asgard it wasn’t expected of him, as first-born it was Thor’s lot, and for centuries Loki never used his magic for anything other than mischief and mild mayhem. At present, Thor has the distinct feeling Loki would tear shreds off his corpse.

There are counter arguments locked away in Loki’s throat, rationale, intelligent pleas. But Thor can’t afford to hear them, or to be swayed. He can’t allow Loki’s silver tongue to infect others. “You didn’t want to bend the knee,” Thor reminds. He says, solemn as an oath: “I couldn’t defeat Hela in battle. _You_ would have sold me to the Grandmaster for my own good…there’s not much in the arena that can kill a god, is there? But you would have done it to keep me safe. Should I apply the same rational to you then, brother? Will you know what place it comes from?”

Thor can hear the expletives in the low noise Loki makes.

Thor returns the blade. Tunic, shirt, the under garments Loki wears: all of these Thor simply shreds at the tip of a knifepoint. The laces to Loki’s breeches are cut, his leather pants stripped off his thighs unceremoniously and thrown into the far reaches of the room. Loki’s underwear is torn in half. Thor doesn’t avoid his accusing stare. He’s not ashamed of his desire, or how the struggle affected him. He’s been half-hard since he wrestled Loki to the dirty floor. Blood runs heady through his veins. It pools in secret places. And his brother’s body is not unknown to him. Thor always thought his brother beautiful.

There’s a tic in Loki’s jaw. He watches intently as Thor settles beside him, one hand on his belly, fingers on Loki’s bruised ribs, to remind him to stay down. At ease, Thor flips Frigga’s book open on his knee, and leafs through the pages. “Magic is not my strength, but the instruction here is simple enough.”

Loki’s arched eyebrow is perfectly eloquent. After a time he grows bored and shimmies under Thor’s hand. Loki widens his legs, cranes his neck to show the soft outline of his throat. His chest is lithe, defined by a runner’s build. Loki was built for speed. Speed of thought, speed of affection. He hits his mark and has moved onward when Thor is still struggling to parse the emotion. He wants to slow his brother down, to extend the moment, let it suffuse between them. When Loki catches his eye, the noise he makes is querulous, soft. He rubs the gag across his collarbone as if easing an itch. Thor is arrested by the motion. Loki the seducer. Loki the wanton. Loki who had sat in the Grandmaster’s lap, who knew the orgy vessel at first sight.

Thor feels something simmer in his belly, crowded against the common fear that has resided there for days. “You’d do better to hide the calculation behind your eyes,” Thor murmurs.

He’s proud of how dry he made his voice sound, and to make a point, licks his finger to turn another page. Loki huffs then cranes his neck to catch a glimpse of the tome. Thor lets his fingers crook, scratching lightly over his flat belly, dragging a hand down to curve over a cool hip. He can tell the moment Loki catches sight of the chapter headings. The air is punched out of his brother’s lungs, as if hit for a third and final time. The seductive sprawl vanishes. “Hhmph,” he says, as he jackknifes upward. “Tthhor! Hhmph!”

“I need some things,” Thor explains, bemused at the thought, “A hammer, a forge, there’s iron enough in this room for what I had in mind, but a sketching pad perhaps, and a chisel would do. None of these items are far.”

When they were boys, Odin took them to view the various trades: to watch the stonemasons, the healers, the warriors at work. To see the mages and the horticulturists, to partake for a day and observe their skill, learn at their elbow. Thor had enjoyed the blacksmiths the most and for a time, was determined to become both a fierce warrior _and_ sword smith. He had been good at it, he recalls. A hammer and a forge at his back, crafting a weapon through adversity and heat. He remembers the reverence he felt when Odin first selected Mjölnir as his. He had long outgrown his desire to become a blacksmith by then, but there was a touch of whimsy in Odin’s gift, a hammer, for the boy he had once been.

Thor says now. “I wish I could trust you to stay.” In this room, for all the days to come, either could be applicable.

Loki’s expression has gone curiously flat. Fear, poorly hidden, for what he had seen amongst Frigga’s pages.

Thor takes a third handcuff from the shelf and simply drops it to the metal grating. The open cuff magnetises to the floor, creating a make-shift D-ring. Thor searches the shelving, inspecting the items. He selects a sturdy leather cord. He uses Loki’s knife to cut four short strips, longer than a handspan, and ties them securely around the cuff. He lets the free ends trail across the floor.

When Thor crouches near, Loki slams his forehead against Thor’s sternum. He’s breathing has turned shallow, under Thor’s touch, Loki’s pulse races, like the beat of a slave drum.

Thor kisses the side of his temple, whispers _Hush_ , and eases him down, calm in the face of his brother’s distress. He handles Loki with propriety, a sense of ownership. Thor lies them both supine. He pushes his brother’s legs open, nuzzling against the creamy skin, and wedges his shoulders between them to keep Loki spread. On the floor his childhood bracelet rests beside his mother’s tome.

Idly, Thor’s knocks his thumb against the crown of Loki’s dick. He gives a quick dry stroke, to see his brother jolt. He can remember hazy afternoons in this position - Loki’s cock wedged half-way down his throat – the breathy sound of his brother gasping, laughing. How he’d say: _You won’t choke, Thor. Gods, gods, you’re made for more punishment than this_. And how Thor had rutted against the sheets, dizzy with need, and thought if Loki believed it was a punishment instead of hot pleasure, then his brother’s wires were miss-crossed long before. Thor aches for the things he has lost. He aches.

It would be easy to open his mouth, take Loki inside, to re-familiarise himself with the weight and taste of him. Instead, he picks up the childish gauntlet. There are miniature eyelets attached to the rim - where on a proper adult, further armour would attach itself. The plates tied together to keep the armour motionless, in its proper place.

With the bracelet in one hand, Thor transfers his other touch from Loki’s dick to his balls. He rolls them gently, finding and separating the spheres, before he yanks straight down. He doesn’t ease off until they are far from their natural position, until Loki howls. His brother’s legs try to slam shut, boxing Thor’s ears. His stomach draws in, concave as he flails. His shoulders flop against the floor only to arch again as Thor keeps him stretched. Thor gets the bracelet over his balls, situates the metal where the skin is pulled paper thin, and then uses the strength in his hand to close it. Compressing, _squeezing,_ until Loki’s cry goes high and tormented. By the time he’s finished the circumference of the bracelet is half again its original size. Loki’s balls, clear of the crumpled metal, dangle at the end of a very long, metal, stem.

In a human, the constriction would be impossible. It would result in circulatory castration in less than thirty minutes. In Loki, his seidr is already healing the damage. Like Thor and any number of knife-wounds and gashes, the magic repairs the injury, only to keep the hurt fresh if the implement remains.

Behind the gag, Loki heaves violently, his throat bobs as he swallows.

Alarmed, Thor hoists him upright, onto his knees, and tilts his brother forward. Face to face, mouth beside his ear, Thor encourages: “Breathe. You were made to survive worse things by far. It’s alright, brother, just listen to me and what I have to say. Are you listening? I don’t believe you ever wanted to be let go. I think when I offered to separate on Sakaar it was anathema to you. I believe you wanted to be held _tight_. Clasped to your family bosom. I think all you ever wanted was to know you were adored…beyond reason…and to have visible proof. Because words can’t be trusted, can they? Not to someone such as you. Words are such notoriously slippery things.” Loki grinds his forehead against Thor’s shoulder, he presses his face into the crook of Thor’s neck. Thor plants one hand on his lower spine, above the perfect swell of Loki’s ass, and clinches his body close. “Can you feel the runes pressing into your flesh? My name written on your scrotum? Can you feel me, squeezing you?” Thor leans away, enough to factor in his brother’s expression.

Loki’s beyond answering, eyes screwed shut, skin clammy with the intimacy of the hurt. Relentless, Thor knocks his knee forward until he hits metal and sets the crushed gauntlet to swinging.

Loki’s eyes fly open, he sobs, a harsh sound as he nods. Thor wraps a handful of dark hair around his fist and doesn’t stop pulling until Loki’s shoulder-blades kiss the ground: calves and feet trapped under his thighs, forearms boxed behind his back, all four limbs parcelled away from sight, like a quadruple amputee. Thor keeps one hand cupped around Loki’s jaw, and slithers downward, until he can take Loki’s dick into his mouth.

This small - flaccid with pain - it’s easy to hold Loki in his mouth, to suckle gently, to apply lips and tongue, the right amount of suction, the right amount of conflicting chaos. There’s no rush. No urgency. Thor can apply a centuries worth of technique. Building the pleasure until it’s an inexorable pull. He loses track of time, the sharp fear he has lived with since Ragnarok fades. The emptiness is misdirected by the more familiar tastes beneath him. The sweat and heft on the tip his tongue. The saliva. He’s content. He would stay in this place, time, for an eternity. Loki gasps, his soft cries take on a divided pitch. The first swell of interest brings awareness to Thor, makes him smile around his mouthful. His hips rut into the floor. At eye-level, Loki’s distended balls are storm-bruised, painful at the end of their stem. Thor touches the rune that spells his name and redoubles the effort, tonguing the slit, taking his brother down to the root. The transition from flaccid to rigid coincides with the wetness on Loki’s cheeks, that dampen Thor’s fingertips. Ponderously slow, Thor draws away from the erect cock. Above him, the cry morphs into a moan.

Loki’s dick slaps against his belly, fully erect and hard, his face a hectic colour. Staked out on the precipice between pain and pleasure, all of Loki’s mis-wires have fused.

“You’re beautiful,” Thor observes, and kisses the straining dick, the lower belly, the first rib. “Especially when you cry - it’s the most honesty I ever see in you – a Loki without artifice. Do you think you can come, brother? With your testicles that far from your body? You’ll be in a world of pain if you do.”

Tenderly, Thor rubs his thumb over Loki’s cheekbones, coaxing him back to awareness. “It’ll hurt - like going over an edge - an endless free fall and at the end there’s only me, ready to gather you in.” Loki’s eyes gain focus, they fix on Thor with unwavering intensity. Thor smiles, his voice genuinely warm. “Did you know when we were young - when you were in my ass, and down my throat - I had never laid with anyone before?”

A startle. Loki can’t hide his reaction and Thor’s honestly surprised he _hadn’t_ known. How could he not? The first man Thor loved, without reservation, ruined him for anyone else. Thor was the oldest, and maybe the expectation was there that he _had_ explored carnal pleasures, but in truth Thor craved war and battle, drinking and camaraderie, and somehow he never got around to finding an appropriate bed-partner. It was Loki who taught him. Loki who broke him down, pulled him apart, rummaged through Thor’s heart and his lungs. Loki who left. Loki who moved on with all of his runners speed.

Thor shrugs, mouth curving into a smirk. “By that age you had more experience then half the garrison combined. You were the second-son. You never had to sit through Frigga’s lectures about the dangers of succession when multiple bastards were running around.”

A snort, a sharp exhale.

There you are, Thor thinks mildly, there you are again.

“I love - and have loved you – since father brought you home . And I will bring you to this point, remind you physically, until you know exactly what’s at the end of the fall.” Thor doesn’t say the obvious. Stripped of every conceivable defence, Loki looks stunningly young to his eye, and besides, Loki wouldn’t believe him yet anyway. Thor takes the room at a glance. The handcuff and cords he set up earlier are situated further away, in the centre of the room. Thor grabs his brother by the crook of his trapped knees and jerks him close to the leather ties.

There are personal items that possess magic. Mjolnir. Gungnir. Hela’s necro-spears. Loki’s daggers. Runes engraved in metal can cause severe complications, too. Any gash or stab wound inflicted can be healed, unless the body part is physically removed in its entirety, by a weapon blessed with magic. Hela, flicking his eye out of its socket with a necro-spear, is an injury Thor can’t regenerate. Likewise with Loki’s illusion when he tricked the Dark Elves - if he’d cut Thor’s hand off at the wrist for real with a seidr-touched blade – then Thor would be short a limb now. Thor’s gauntlet, child-size at it is, has magic as well, albeit a benevolent one. The metal can’t be penetrated by any weapon nor pried apart, except by the bearer of its name. Under the supervision of the blacksmiths, all those summers ago, Thor etched his runes all over it.

The cords cut previously are barely a hand-span in length. He loops the leather through the various eyelets on the gauntlet, and ties Loki to the ground by his balls.

The leash is not long enough to allow him any range of movement. If he stands or pulls against it with force, he’ll separate what he holds dear, and tear his testicles clean off. The gauntlet won’t give. Neither will the manacle bolted to the floor. As permanent, and horrifying an injury, as Thor’s lost eye. He can see the growing awareness in Loki’s face as he lashes the eyelets down, one by one. The predicament of his bondage makes it past the haze of discomfort. He whimpers with every jostle between cord and gauntlet.

He’s focused on Thor to exclusion of anyone else. Thor checks to make sure he’s still hard, wet with spit.

Thor has been in a similar condition for an age. He doesn’t undress except to free his aching cock from his breeches. Carefully, he lowers himself. He catches Loki’s wince as the limbs under him are compressed further. With his feet and heels under his bum, Loki’s crotch is arched and Thor slots himself into that warm space with a groan. The gag, when his mouth brushes against it, taste as blood.  Familiar and intimate. “I would have this off. I would have my flesh inside you. I would like to see how we’ve changed in practice, but not yet.  Not yet, brother.”

Their cocks slip-slide with spit and pre-come. Thor digs his toes into the grating and ruts forward. Pleasure blossoms. His skin goes hot and prickly. He rocks minutely, quiet as the open sea, and stares below, at the leaky mess pooling on Loki’s belly. The visual is enough to make him pant. The next thrust is forceful. Loki’s body skips across the grating like a stone. Thor’s balls slap against the end of the stem. The cords, tethering Loki to the D-ring jerk taut with the impact and behind the gag, Loki screams. His head thrashes until Thor gets a hand around both their cocks, rubbing them briskly. “Would you like me to hold you steady, brother?” Thor doesn’t wait for an answer but curls his free arm around Loki’s shoulders. He tugs down until there’s slack in the tethers. He strips their cocks with efficient speed, with a twisting flutter of thumb and forefinger around the crown. Loki’s slit is wet with smeared fluid, his body reacting copiously as he flits in a state of chaos. Thor’s on the edge of his own release, groaning with need on each swipe of his thumb. He thinks his brother will make it, with this battlefield of constraints and pulley’s, he thinks he knows which side Loki will safely land on.

“Are your limbs sore?” Thor kisses the salt and stress away. Loki shakes against him but nods. Gods, you were made for suffering, Thor think, like an echo of yesteryear.

Thor lifts him easily as if he were a child. Thor’s muscles bulk and shift, searching for relief. They come to their knees again - bums to their heels - low to the ground as possible. He can see the relief blur across his brother’s face, the ache in arms and legs diminished. The position separates their body’s though - cocks no longer aligned - a distance Thor can't abide. His own dick bobs and twitches with neglect in the cool air. He gives Loki the grace of a few seconds, to parse the meaning behind his next words. “Shall we see what you stole from Odin's vault?  Shall we see how far the fall is?” Loki goes still. His face crumbles with delayed understanding.

He sways before he folds into Thor, sweaty hair and an unresisting body. The contact should scorch them both. Thor fits his hand in its customary spot, at the base of that frail neck, the other lands on his brother’s rump. Smoothly he lifts them both upright, the two of them kneeling tall. Thighs, belly, torso make contact. Their dicks touch from the base root to the cock-head and as Thor jerks and pulls at them both, fingers sticky with pre-come, he can hear the creak of the leather, knows the gauntlet has stretched Loki’s testicles to near tearing. Loki’s hips jerk, they batter and grind against Thor in a pantomime of sex. His movement, spastic and uncoordinated, spurs on Thor’s own pleasure, and he spills with a low groan. Long pulses of come streak Loki’s skin from groin to chin. Thor keeps stroking them both, hand a blur, until Loki follows him over.

It’s a strange ejaculation, accompanied by his brother’s pitiful wail. Thor let’s them down, until the tethers pool with a newfound slack. Loki’s drenched in sweat. He circles on his leash like a dog trying to settle before he simply collapses. Curled inward. Thor puts a hand on his each knee and pries his legs apart.

He’s still coming, a slow drawn out trickle as his orgasm rolls onward, as if the distance travelled from collection point to piss-slit is hazardous and overly long. Thor glances at his balls. They’re disfigured. They hang far from his body, low as a stallion, but the scrotum is still attached. They’ll heal, Thor knows, so he pays them no further mind. Instead he touches Loki across his shivering flank. He unwraps the cloak from around his forearms and covers his brother with it. He takes away one set of bindings, so that Loki’s arms can straighten behind his back but leaves the remaining cuff to loop around the slim wrists. Thor readjusts the girth, tightening it just enough. He doesn’t pin or coerce Loki, but lies on his side like a question mark. He puts his mouth on Loki’s dick again, sucking the last of the semen out, and feels his brother twitch. Thor lifts the tortured scrotum, cupping it. The crawl of seidr flickers over his hand, the damage, inexorably starts to repair itself. Loki groans when his testicles brush the gauntlets rim, when he realises Thor’s bracelet still remains, that he’s yet tied to the floor.

“A hammer, a sketching pad, a chisel – your bondage remains until I return. Yes? Yes, Loki?”

His brother nods, expression slack. The stretch in his nether regions is nothing to what he just endured, but the discomfort will only increase as he heals to his previous state. He moves restlessly against Thor, seeking comfort, and Thor decides the items can wait. He lies prone on his back and gather's Loki close, mindful of the tethers, and covers them both with the cloak. Thor rubs random patterns against his arms, tucks the long strands of hair out of the way, and watches as Loki goes from prey-still to heavy and lax. “Can you feel my grip, my name? Do you trust I won’t let go?” Loki is breathing deep and easily through the gag, the nod is barely perceptible. Thor wants the device off, wants to hear his brother’s voice. He misses it, missed him for an age. Thor keeps his words a low rumble, a vibration that travels to Loki’s ear, pressed over Thor’s heart. “I’m what’s on the other side, brother, I always will be. The humans - ” Thor pauses, then adds carefully, because this is something they don’t speak of, that Loki never raises – “ _Thano’s_ ; have no claim on you.”

Loki raises his head and makes eye contact. He stares upward at Thor like he’s something impossible; the way Thor so often stared at him, as if he’s the sum total of an entire world.


End file.
